WHEN SOUNDS GRATe
Every Single “They” of the Week
– my assistant’s speech defect drives me crazy.
My assistant can’t pronounce “T”. Or “D”.
If she appoints someone on a Saturday, she says “Satur-they.” Her tongue hits her front teeth instead of arching back to hit her palate for the “day” part of Saturday.
Unfortunately, for me – every single day of the week ends in they.
If you pronounce the word tomato, you find your tongue touching your teeth for the first “tomato” and going backwards to your palate for the second “tomato”.
She’d keep her tongue firmly against her teeth for both. Say it once to experience the horror. Hit the back of your upper front teeth twice during the pronunciation of tomato.
I know, tomato, tohmato, they-may-tho!
Physically, her tongue and palate are fine and capable of pronouncing the sounds correctly
Before she became my assistant, I examined her teeth as her dentist. She has no tongue tie or roof of the mouth irregularities. Yet, her T’s and D’s continue to annoy my sensitive ear.
